It came upon a midnight clear, that glorious song of old, From angels bending near the earth to touch their harps of gold."Peace on the earth, good will to men, from heaven's all gracious King.The world in solemn stillness lay to hear the angels sing.

the world in solemn stillness lay...

Still through the cloven skies they come with peaceful wings unfurled,and still their heavenly music floats o'er all the weary world.Above its sad and lowly plains they bend on hov'ring wings. And ever o'er its Babel sounds the blessed angels sing.

...and still their heavenly music floats o'er all the weary world.

And ye, beneath life's crushing load, whose forms are bending low,Who toil along the climbing way with painful steps and slow.Look now! For glad and golden hours come swiftly on the wing:O rest beside the weary road and hear the angels sing.

December 21. Four days until Christmas. “Are you ready for Christmas?” is a common question these days…checking lists…what remains to be done before The Day? ​

How about pause. Reflect. Be still. (Maybe next week???)

No, I suggest, I urge, now. Today. And maybe again tomorrow.

Every day.

Pause. Because you need The Presence.​

The hunting season is paused for a few weeks, and

I need the exercise, I need the woods, I need to think, I need to pause, I need… ​ The Presence. ​This is a good prayer for such a day, for such a season:

Psalm 63:1O God, You are my God. I seek you earnestly. My soul thirsts for you… longs for you…As in a dry and weary landwhere there is no water. (Or at least no snow so far this winter.)

I wander up the path. The woodspace is open now; leafless trees pause in the life cycle for rest, to go deep, to wait for spring.

Bird song is muted; no murmur of a breeze can be heard.​ Not one squirrel announces my presence; we’ve had a sudden cold snap and they are hunkered down in their messy looking dreys.

It’s a still place.

But it is not empty.

I am halfway to wherever when I finally tune in to the whispers of life surrounding me.

​I hear a great horned owl calling, low and steady, pause, repeat. The call is repeated in a higher pitch far up the mountain. Mating season comes early for these predators.

Woodpeckers tap.tap.tap. their steady rhythms and call out the warningswhen I encroach on their space.

​The raucous alarm cry of the pileated woodpecker raises my curiosity and I stand, pauselong, until I spot him, high in the canopy. (Sorry, no clear picture!) I wait him out, and he forgets me, or decides I’m not a threat, and resumes his busy-ness- he is dangling, twisting, snatching red berries from a bittersweet vine twined sixty feet above the forest floor. Looks like a happenin’ Christmas party for one.

I see other signs of forest activity. Someone has cleared a fallen tree from the path and neatly stacked the wood. Something has torn apart a log in search of a snack; I notice a recently excavated hole about the size of a chipmunk…it’s nap time.

Long unseen fingers of frozenness have brushed across the pond, adding crackle glaze to tree reflections.

Handiwork of an unseen Hand.

I could turn around now, and it would be enough-this place,this stillness,this pause,this quiet.

But I choose otherwise. This time I will not rush home. This is a different kind of power walk…

I hear the water before I see the glory,a stream of water gushing from a hidden source deep in the heart of the mountain.

It is my favorite resting place on a hot summer afternoon. Beyond this spot, the path disintegrates into a tangle of thorny canes and tick cover and snake rocks, but right here, a reservoir overflows with pure clearness that quenches more than my thirst today.

​It’s been just cold enough, and the ice beauty catches me off guard. Oh, dear God, You did this. For me?I doubt anyone else has seen it, just this way, this day. My eyes, my soul can barely take it in.

I see a host of ice fractals, patterned in a multitude of designs.

A waterfall of icicles flows from one nondescript twig.

Ridged crackle glaze coats leaf debris.

​Orbs of crystal rest on moss beds.

This one makes me smile...(is this what happens to naughty aliens?)

I stand back to take in the delicate ring of ice formations…ummm, did You intend that to be heart shaped?

And then, ohhh...these exquisite ferns.

I’m out of words and on my knees,bending low​to see this breathtaking beauty,to capture photos so I will remember,to say "thank you."

Psalm 63:2-4 continues:So I have looked upon You, I have seen You – to gaze at, to perceive, to contemplate with pleasure. This is a more poetic word than the usual “seen.” It refers to a prophetic vision and insight, to seeing God.

In the sanctuary – a sacred place. “God’s presence is what makes any place, anything, or anyone holy.” (Note from NASB Key Word Study Bible, OT entry 6944) Moses heard God’s voice at the burning bush, “...the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” It was his unexpected encounter with the living God in an ordinary place that became holy. Yes. I get that. I'm standing stock still on holy frozen ground.

I don’t take my shoes off…brrr... but my soul kneels and my heart is raised in praise to this One who would pause to create this place of pauseto meet my need, to meet me.

My lips will praise you– to address in a loud tone! (I’m doing it, yes I am, because my heart is overflowing, and I just want to thank Someone.)

It’s not easy to keep a firm grip onhope.Some days the “in house issues” nearly get the best of me, and even on uneventful days in my Hickory Lane world, the broader world of which I am also a part looks very grim indeed.

On the national scene, can we be done with the election already? I don’t want to choose between frontrunners known for duplicity and/or obnoxiousness. There is no box for “neither” but must we again reduce our options to the lesser of the two evils? I’m so over that scenario. And it’s only December. Eleven more months of this?

And even without the election, the polarization of friends and relatives on the topic(s) of terrorism/immigration and police brutality/bashing leaves little room for hope, says my inner cynic.

Internationally, more of the same as far as terrorism/immigration, with the added layer of third world horrors and needs and blatant disregard for the dignity of all humans, but particularly women and children.

​ Hopefades like a forgotten melody from a childhood lullaby.

That’s (one reason) why I hold in high value the quiet dark hours before sunrise. In the warm glow of my desk light, I look over yesterday’s “list” and start a new one for the day at hand; I list my gratitudes, and read and listen and write and pray. (Oh, and drink coffee, of course!)

In those quiet moments, the way I see life is recalibrated, my perspecticals are adjusted to a broader, no, a Higher view, and I find my footing on the path ofhope once again. ​On Tuesday, the lamp light illuminated the devotional book I’ve been revisiting; this was the recommended verse:

May the God ofhopefill you with all joy and peace in believingso that by the power of the Holy Spirityou may abound in hope.Romans 15:13

My first thought upon reading was, “count me in.” Who in their right mind wouldn’t want to be filled with alljoyand peace, with a bonus of abounding inhope?!

It’s over the top, not just a splash of joy or a dash of hopesprinkled on my day like so much colored sugar on a Christmas cookie. More like a tin cup- or a big galvanized tub- balanced beneath our old fashioned pump, and water pouring from a hidden source, filling the tin cup with one mighty blast, running into the tub without pause or hesitation, overflowing on every side.

I paused and visualized those "over the top" words and I wanted to quench my longing thirst forhope,to wash my soul clean of the grunge of this despairing world and stand refreshed, revived, refilled with hope…and overflowing too.

Here’s my journal prayer from that morning:“So, today I need hope from the God of hope, (Source of hope, that’s You!) I want to believe in You, to trust You and be filled with all joy and peace (even today,) so that through the power of Your Holy Spirit - and none other! - I may abound inhope!

I have been trying various ways to stay connected with whatever it is I absorb in these early hours…It's disconcerting how quickly I lose track of truth as the day unfolds (or unravels) around me. So, Tuesday I had scribbled this reminder at the top of my to-do list:

God of hope – Source. Trust Him. Abound in hope – from Holy Spirit.

And so my day was reset into hopemode.

It was a very ordinary Hickory Lane day.

-I stirred up brownies for the Live Nativity happening at the church in the evening (when they asked me to bring some cookies I was too…embarrassed to say, well I didn’t bake any yet…and I might not?! So, brownies.)

-I put clean laundry in its rightful place and supper in a slow cooker place.

-Someone needed eggs, so I went in search of the newest hiding place during which search 13 sheep discovered I had looped the gate chain without fastening it; they headed into the yard for “the greener grass.” I found the eggs (and the shells from the eggs the neighbor’s dog found before I did…) and redirected the sheep before heading off for a doctor visit.

​-Via text, Oldest Extra Son was helping me figure out a major detail regarding a Christmas gift for Youngest Mystery.

-At the same time, I was helping a friend sort her way to a healthier new Christmas normal for her family and wishing, deeply, for the same thing for myself. Sigh. Sometimes it feels hopeless.

-My heart was grieving a private grief, an unexpected loss that caught me off guard. I tried to let go of it, but those tentacles wrapped around my heart and squeezed. -My to-do list got left behind on the kitchen counter, along with the reminder to trust God.

Abounding inhopebecame a distant memory as the day wore on. ​​

I wanted to slip into the local StuffMart to pick-up some gift wrap, (don’t judge me) a task that always stirs my ecological sensibilities. I rue the expense, the lovely paper purchased to be destroyed…but every year the net result of my concern is that the time comes to wrap gifts, and oops, we don’t have enough gift wrap and it’s the 23rd and all that’s left on the store shelf is “Frozen” paper. Or pink poinsettia prints.

So this year I decided to just pre-plan the extravagance of buying a lot of gift wrap thus at least dealing with one level of stress. And if time allowed for repurposed gift wrap creativity, no problem. Then I'd be set for next year. ​I was a woman on a mission, get the gift wrap and get out. I had pulled my cart from the queue and was maneuvering it into the aisle when I saw them from the corner of my eye, two elderly ladies paused before the cart tangle.

They seemed to be from another era:​Their quality wool coats were decades old, and their silver hair looked freshly “done” beneath jaunty…hats?! Stout and sturdy hosiery clad legs ended in sensible black shoes, polished but not shined. Both of them carried black “pocketbooks,” (I think they were the click shut type) and one leaned heavily on a quad cane. The wheelchair cart was in their view, but not within their reach. I paused, and knew I needed to help them.

Even I had a little trouble wrestling the chair from its less than ideal spot, and then I noticed, beside it, the fancy power chair that I’ve always thought would be a blast to drive. I paused, then queried, “Are you sure you don’t want this one instead?” ​

“Well, we thought we’d let that for someone who really needed it, you know, who is shopping alone. See, I can push her.”

​Hmmm. I felt a flicker, a warm little flame of…something in my soul, but I didn’t have time to think more about it as we got her settled in the chair with her pocketbook and cane and coat arranged.

When they were ready to venture forth, I felt much lighter than when I’d rocketed through the door, and it didn’t matter that someone had taken my cart and I had to do battle to pull another one from the jumble. I started on my way again, when I heard her murmur, “Let me give you something.” She was fumbling in her purse.

“Oh dear, no,” I thought…and said, “No, no, please.”Her eyes twinkled above her rosy cheeks as she stopped her rummaging and extended her hand toward me. “But you’ll take this won’t you,” I heard thehopein her voice. (Oh, that’s what I'd caught a glimmer of earlier, it was,hope!!)​

What a relief, she wasn't holding money…it was a little business card – a 2016 calendar on one side, and on the other, a fragment of one verse.

The font was simple, the background unassuming, but the words imprinted there blew through my soul like fresh Wind, and fanned my flickering flame into full brightness. ​

“May the God of hopefill you with all joy and peace in believing…”

​​Thank you, oh, this verse! I just read it this morning…thank you, thank you…so that by the power of the Holy Spirit I can abound inhope. And, I do!!”

I found my gift wrap, loaded excessive rolls of it in the van along with extravangant hope, and headed home to feed two hungry shepherds who had wrestled bewildered sheep to their hay hillside in the church fellowship hall.

I set out with my brownies and my camera and went in search of….well, morehope.

(You can never have too much hope.)​​

I found disheveled angels and giggling shepherds, animalseverywhere, and exuberant kids, and hope.

It wasn’t a silent night, but it was oh so holy, and full of hope.​

Oh holy night, the stars are brightly shiningIt is the night of our dear Savior's birth.Long lay the world in sin and error pining'Til He appeared and the soul felt its worthA thrill of hope the weary world rejoicesFor yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.Fall on your knees O hear the angels voices.O night divine O night when Christ was bornO night divine, O night, O night divine.

﻿Today I’m grateful for friends with whom to pray,friends for whom to pray,and a God who welcomes every prayer and every pray-er.​So often when I come to prayer, I do a lot of talking -bringing my praiseand my gratitudesand my requests to God. I can talk, talk, talk His ear off with my many words, and he’s good about listening, just another bit that I love about Him. (I thought about saying "for which I am eternally grateful…")

﻿Recently, though, I’ve been learning the value of praying with less talking,more listening.

I’m learning to heed a quiet Voice,to pay attention those thoughts that float into my mind, like wild geese appearing through the mist from​...somewhere beyond where I am.

Here is a story from my very ordinary life aboutlistening prayer.

I regularly meet with a group of friends to pray “for the children,” and one morning we were focusing on my faraway friend and her houseful of children –

​My heart was stirred as I heard my friend across the table praying for my friend across the globe with intensity and deep compassion. I listened as she interceded for the health of one particularly sick small human, ravaged in body and soul in ways too vile to describe. “We are awash in bodily fluids,” my weary faraway friend had confided a few hours earlier. As my nearby friend prayed, I heard their two voices overlapping. It was a kind of communion of souls.

Into those quiet moments, Iheard the whisper of another Voice,and I almost missed the message,​one simple word.

“Yogurt.”

Not an audible voice, but unmistakably clear.

“Yogurt.”

I paused mid-thought. “Oh Lord God, Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible…did you say, 'Yogurt?'”I jotted the word in my undersized notebook beside the day’s prayer list.

I’ve been learning, oh so slowly, tolistenfor those promptings, to send a card here, to carry a meal there, to connect this person with that one, to initiate a conversation. But – yogurt?

My heart smiled.

Prayers ended and I hurried home to reply to the “such sick children” message…

”Yogurt…do you have access to yogurt?”

In minutes, from a place so remote even a doctor won’t visit, her reply flew across the miles, “Thank you Jesus.”

In my heart, I echoed her deep gratitude- thank you, Jesus,

…that the least of these are indeed Your dearly loved little ones, and they matter to You.…that You are in the details, always.…that You whispered “yogurt” into a quiet place in my heart…that for this once I was listening!!​

I think our culture tosses the word “holy” around much too carelessly these days –

​holy cow, holy Batman, holy crap…

Mindless misuse has stripped the word “holy” of its sacredness, leaving it tarnished, smudged, and caked with so much muck it’s barely recognizable.

But this yogurt? Oh yes indeed, thank you Jesus. Holy yogurt.​

Post Script - While I was preparing this story, I thought it would be more credible if I contacted my friend about the yogurt - was it working, could she even find it, etc. I felt a bit anxious about her possible responses – what if yogurt was just not available there? What if her kiddos were just too sick, and it wasn’t helpful. What then? Would that mean I had heard wrong? Here is an excerpt from her reply:

​I got yogurt for raw tummies and it helped a lot. I also found it helped thrush so nicely. (I was) very surprised to see the healing properties of yogurt. I now buy a large tub for all the hiv/arv children weekly. I get the plain one as it seems to work better.

﻿I carefully poured the tiny ceramic nativity scene into my hand…a few memories slipped out with it. Youngest had purchased the set at a Thrift store a few years back, when Grandma moved to assisted living and the little shelf outside her door was empty and it was Christmas. The set was missing a piece, but it was good enough, and I recalled her joyful smile as she opened his loving and unexpected gift. I planned to display the crèche somewhere at our house this year since Grandma no longer needs a little ceramic Jesus…she’s met Him face to face.

​”But, oh dear - I gave the little group a cursory check…no Jesus.

I was sure that wasn’t the piece that had been missing last year.

​“Great,” I muttered to myself, “we’ve lost Jesus."I paused. ​Oh.We've lost Jesus.

Well, that pretty much sums up Christmas USA. Instead of Jesus, we’ve got mall Santa and elf on the shelf. I googled “Christmas characters” and scrolled through Rudolph, Frosty, the Grinch and a multitude of Santas but no Jesus. Eight rows down, I stumbled upon three out of place wise men, attended by SpongeBob and Garfield in Santa hats, myriad Disney characters decked out for the season, and even a holiday version of Yoda, r2d2, and c3po. ​I’m not making this up.

But. Seriously. No Jesus. No manger. No Mary. No Joseph.

The categories at the top of the search included “Movie, Famous, Disney, Costumes, Famous Christmas movie, and Cute.” My inner cynic didn’t want to give up, so I checked under “Famous” because, you know “Christmas”… surely Jesus (Christ!) would show up there.

Nope.

Scrolled through the entire selection and found two “nativity scenes:” the Simpsons, and one with this tag-“This cool art mashup features popular video game characters mixed with the famous Nativity Scene.” (You don’t want to know.)

​But, No Jesus.

“Great,” I muttered to myself again. “This confirms it. We really have lost Jesus.” I’m not a scrooge, and oh how I love Jesus, but Holy Holly, when I look around, it does seem we’ve lost him completely. Maybe I should just put the crèche out without the baby and see if anyone misses him.​

Fortunately, I took a second look in the box, and there, down in the corner, kind of stuck in the dark and the quiet…Jesus.

​I felt relieved. I hadn’t lost him after all.

​I’m finding I really have to look closely if I want to find Jesus in all of the holiday hullabaloo, and I know I think/talk/write about this every year; I think I even used "hullaballoo" last year, such a fitting description of all the trappings that have been tinsel-tied onto “Christmas.” (“a very noisy and confused situation; a confused noise, uproar, commotion.”) But I think it is worthwhile to keep looking until we find the One who came, unsought, to lowly folk in a quiet, dark barn (or a noisy inn yard, depending on which commentator you read – but either way, no tree, no lights, no shopping mall. Just Jesus.)

It seems like finding Jesus was perplexing from the get-go.

King Herod and his cronies looked and looked, but they couldn’t find Him.

The wisemen weren’t so smart after all,and it took them awhile,​and they left a bloody mess in their wake,​but eventually they found Him, and they worshiped.

The shepherds seemed to have to trouble at all.They weren't. even. looking. for. Jesus. in the first place. They sat in the dark, heard the news, and ran to find Jesus. They worshiped too.

Finding Jesus.

Maybe mashup is, after all, a good word for my search for Jesus in December…or anytime. When I try to decode a strategy, understand the pattern, I find people seeking Jesus (or not), people finding Jesus (or not.) Layer upon layer of mystery and and seeking and finding.

​ I see that sometimes Jesus just shows up and is found by people who aren’t really looking for him, and the next time he’s nowhere to be found. ​He pauses long where no one expects him, in smelly corners comforting those who sit in darkness. He occasionally slips out of church and no one notices he’s gone. He eludes the powerful or calls them by name, saying, “Come.” He walks along the edges with the wanderers.He whispers of another path to oppressors in their dreams.

Author

I'm finding my way beyond the maze of the "middle" years (if I'm gonna be 100 and something someday...) ​living life as a country woman who is a writer, gardener, wife, mom, nature observer, teacher,and most of all a much loved child of God.